[213-3] Hibernating animals have supplies and dwellings, that is something analogous[TN 41] to capital.
[213-4] This advance is generally observed to be introduced by the jus fortioris. Steuart, Principles I, ch. 7. (Compare §§ 45-6-8.) In this way, the earliest oriental despotisms have unwittingly been of great service to mankind. What the sultan here accomplished with his few favorites was done in the lower stages of civilization of the west by the aristocracy of great vassals, in a manner more worthy of human beings, and in a much more stable form. (J. S. Mill, Principles I, 14 ff.)
[213-5] Banfield, Organization of Industry, 1848, 11.
CAUSES OF AN INCREASE OF PRODUCTION.
Only when wants increase does production increase also.[214-1] The old maxim: Si quem volueris esse divitem, non est quod augeas divitias, sed minuas cupiditates (Seneca), would, if consistently carried out, have thwarted the advance of civilization and frustrated the improvement of man's condition. On the other hand, most political economists, without more ado, assume that individuals, and still more nations, are wont to extend the aggregate of their enjoyments just as far as there is a possibility of satisfying their wants. But they forget here how great a part is played in the world, as men are constituted, by the principle of inertia.[214-2] At the first blush, what seems more natural than that the less labor a people need employ to obtain the most indispensable means of subsistence, the more time and taste would remain to them to satisfy their more refined wants. According to this, we should expect to discover a more refined civilization, especially, in intellectual matters, in the earliest periods, when population is small, when land exists in excess and is not yet exhausted. But, in reality, precisely the reverse is the case. In the earliest stages of civilization[TN 42] accessible to our observation, we find materialism prevailing in its coarsest form, and life absorbed entirely by the lowest physical wants. (Tropical lands.) Where bread grows on the trees, and one needs only to reach out his hand and pluck it; where all one wants to cover his nakedness is a few palm leaves, ordinary souls find no incentive to an ant-like activity, or to a union among themselves for economic purposes.[214-3] When a Mexican countryman earns enough to keep himself and his family from absolute want by two days' labor in a week, he idles away the other five. It never occurs to him that he might devote his leisure time to putting his hut or his household furniture, etc., in better shape. The necessity of foresight even is almost unknown; and in the most luxuriantly fertile country in the world, a bad harvest immediately leads to the most frightful famine. Humboldt was assured that there was no hope of making the people more industrious except by the destruction of the banana plantations.[214-4] But, indeed, there would be little gained by such compulsory industry. To work for any other end than satiation, it is necessary that man should feel wants beyond the want created by mere hunger.[214-5] There are so many conditions precedent (and mutually limiting one another) to a general advance in civilization, that such an advance can, as a rule, take place only very gradually. Let us suppose, for instance, a single Indian in Mexico, perfectly willing to work six days in the week, and in this way to cultivate a piece of land three times as great as his fellow Indians. Where would he get the land? He would, for a time find no purchasers for his surplus, and therefore not be in a condition to pay the landlord as much as the latter hitherto received from the pasturage alone. Not until cities are built and offer the rural population the products of industry in exchange for theirs, can they be incited to, or become capable of effecting a better cultivation of the land. This incentive and this capacity, are inseparably connected with each other. Where the agricultural population produce no real surplus, but after the fashion of medieval times, produce everything they want themselves, and consume all their own products with the exception of the part paid to the state as a tax, there can scarcely be an industrial class, a commercial class, or a class devoted to science, art, etc. And, conversely, it is only the higher civilization which finds expression in the development of these classes, that, by a more skillful guidance of the national labor, can call forth its productiveness to an extent sufficient to yield a considerable surplus of agricultural commodities over and above the most immediate wants of the cultivators of the soil themselves. Hence, we find that precisely in those countries which are most advanced in the economic sense, there is relatively the smallest number of men engaged in agriculture, and relatively the largest number in production of a finer kind.[214-6] It is here as in private housekeeping: the poorer a man is, the greater is the portion of his income which he is wont to lay out for indispensable necessities.[214-7] [214-8]
[214-1] There is obviously here supposed besides the want thus increased, a capacity for development. Thus, for instance, the inhabitants of New Zealand brought with them, in what concerns clothing, dwellings, etc., the customs of a tropical into a colder country, and did not understand how to oppose the rigor of the new climate, except by building immoderately large fires, until they became acquainted with European teachers. (Edinb. Review, April, 1850, 466.)
[214-2] Compare R. S. Zachariä, Vierzig Bücher vom Staate, VII, 37. Men in the lower stages of civilization cherish a greater contempt for those more advanced than they are themselves visited with by the latter. Thus it was customary for the Siberian hunting races to utter a malediction: May your enemy live like a Tartar, and have the folly to engage in the breeding of cattle. (Abulghazi Bahadur, Histoire généalogique des Tartares.) Nomadic races look upon the inhabitants of cities as for the most part prisoners.
[214-3] The "happy, contented negroes," as Lord John Russel called them, work in Jamaica, on an average, only one hour a day since their emancipation. (Colonial Magazine, Nov. 1849, 458.) Egypt, India, etc., from time immemorial, the classic lands of monkish laziness. Compare Hume, Discourses, No. 1, on Commerce. On the other hand, the person who has six months before him for which he must labor and lay up a store, if he would not famish or freeze, must necessarily be active and frugal; and there are other virtues which go along with these. (List, System der polit. Oek., I, 304.) According to Humboldt, the change of seasons compels man to get accustomed to different kinds of food, and thus fits him to migrate. The inhabitants of tropical countries are, on the other hand, like caterpillars, which cannot emigrate nor be made to emigrate, on account of the uniform nature of their food.
[214-4] Humboldt, N. Espagne, IV, ch. 9, II, ch. 5. Similarly among the coarser Malayan tribes, the facility with which fish is caught and the cheapness of sago are the principal causes of their inertia and of their unprogressive uncivilization. (Crawfurd.)